Denis: If you're looking for an interesting AI project, I noticed the other day that there doesn't seem to be a good open-source grammar checker. It must be hard though, otherwise Emacs would integrate with one.

Jonsul wrote:I think I'm what you'd call a young lisper, I'm 21. I'm not learning lisp for college our anything, but for personal reasons. Long story short, I seem to understand what seems like fringe languages over mainstream ones like C/C++. (Shame the lisp scene isn't bigger then it should be) I think I just think differently then normal people and don't like languages that force me to do things someone else's way. Reason why I won't touch any kind of C any more, learned some in a class and hated it.

So anyways I love lisp a lot! and am interested if there are any other young guys like me out there. Also I'd really like to hear how people were introduced to lisp and why.

But anyway you should know some basics of C as it is the most popular language today.

I am 32. I was working on a project in Java, and was in really deep. Working on it for over a year. Then I read "Hackers and Painters". That book was a real eye opener for me. Although Lisp is esoteric, and the many PHP programmers will think you are crazy, it is a very rewarding experience. And its going to be difficult to explain why to do anything is Lisp as opposed to using a more popular language that has more accessable libraries. But the language allows you to think about programming in such an abstract way, that you may find yourself able to figure out the workings of many programs, written in languages you dont even know (nothing too crazy or mystical though, just basic programs).

I have been using the language for about 3 years, and so far wrote a webserver, on which I wrote an online user based file system, a multi threaded webserver (broken on my current system), and was working generating ebay turbolister csv files and webpages for a fledgeling business. Created a system, for example, to integrate user based programs written in a subset of Common Lisp with spreadsheets, so that column data could be proccessed acourding to a user program.

Its definately an eye opener. The problem I am running into now, is if I learned, for example PHP, I could probably get a job in the field, but that I learned something a gazillion times more powerfull, it seems I have to be more like a business founder, because businesses have very practical concerns, of whether or not they can do business without you. If you are a Lisper, the answer may very well be no.

Overall, I think you made the right move to Lisp, from my very limited perspective.

Wow! Average age (included mine) is only 25. I thoght that I would be among the youngest with my 22 years.

I found out about lisp quite recently when my brother gave me "Land of Lisp" by Conrad Barski. A fantasticly fine book. Fine egnough to convince me that learning common lisp can be fun and maybe even useful. Now looking for a suitable project that could push me further .

I'm 18, but I met with lisp* (elisp) in the book: Lenka Třísková. GNU nástroje pro tvorbu WWW stránek. Grada Publishing. 2000. ISBN 80-7169-861-X a few years ago when I've played with HTML, PHP, etc. (my website exists since 2006-11-02 09:50:52).* But I didn't get it at that time and there is a little about it written in the book.

I'm 36. Started working as a programmer 14 years ago, but found LISP just a couple of years ago when one of my colleagues suggested I'd look at it.I've used my summer vacations to learn LISP. I started out learning Common Lisp using "The Land of LISP" (Great book). This year I have concentrated on learning Scheme by going though the lambda papers and the old SICP videoes. I like DrRacket